The book analyses migration and mobility from the colonial territories of France, Italy, Portugal and Great BritainThe book includes contributions from an international team of contributors including Eva Garau, Toni Ricciardi and Simone PaoliIn a very innovative way, the volume looks at the disappearing of colonial powers and at the European unification process not only as simultaneous proceedings, as they have been usually approached, but as linked ones

This monograph addresses mobility and migrations as contributing phenomena in shaping contemporary Europe after 1945, in connection with decolonisation and the creation of the European Community. The disappearing of the colonial empires caused a large movement of people (former colonizers as well as formerly colonized people) from the extra-European countries to the "Old continent"; while the European integration project encouraged the movement of the citizens within the Community. The book retraces how, in both cases, migrations and mobility impacted the way national communities, as well as the European one, have been defining themselves and their real and imaginary boundaries.